"Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve GOD upon this mountain." Exodus 3:12

"Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of GOD, even to Horeb. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." Exodus 3:1-2

"The theory on which Ron Wyatt was basing his exploratory trip into the Middle East was founded on two very obvious points made by Flavius Josephus and recorded in the Bible. Both mention that the Hebrew children went south from Egypt, through the desert, ending at the shore of the Red Sea in an area where 'the mountains were closed with the sea.' That the Red Sea at that time extended - in name at least - as far as Eilat at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba can be seen in I Kings 9:26, where it states that 'King Solomon made a navy of ships at Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.'
 
Wyatt reasoned therefore that the Israelites had crossed the Sinai from west to east and had finally reached an area on the eastern coast (Gulf of Aqaba) where a mountain range met the sea. According to the record, the Egyptians had taken over the mountain peaks near the area to prevent the Hebrews from escaping. It also mentions that after they had crossed the Red Sea, Moses took them to 'Mt. Sinai in order to offer sacrifices to GOD.'
 
A careful examination of the eastern shore of the Sinai peninsula allows for only one place where two million people and their flocks can be gathered. It is the wide expanse of beach near Nuweiba, the south end of which is closed off by steep mountains!
 
Nearby is a wide and wild mountain gorge known as the Wadi Watir, an ancient dried-out riverbed that forms a natural roadway into the Sinai desert, while both the Bible and Josephus indicate that Moses took the Hebrews to Mt. Sinai after they crossed the Red Sea into what is now known as Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, not far from the opposite shore is a mountain known as Jebel El Lawz, a steep, forbidding peak. Is it possible that this is the Mt. Sinai that Moses speaks of?
 
There are many different theories regarding the possible location of the real Mt. Sinai, and Ron Wyatt's location wasn't all that farfetched...."

"The origin of the present Monastery of Saint Catherine on the NW slope of Jebel Musa is traced back to A.D. 527, when Emperor Justinian established it on the site where Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, had erected a small church two centuries earlier." (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 1962, p. 376.)
 
"There is no Jewish tradition of the geographical location of Mt. Sinai; it seems that its exact location was obscure already in the time of the monarchy....The Christian hermits and monks, mostly from Egypt, who settled in Southern Sinai from the second century C.E. on, made repeated efforts to identify the locality of the Exodus with actual places to which the believers could make their way as pilgrims. The identification of Mt. Sinai either with Jebel Sirbal near the oasis of Firan...,or with Jebel Musa, can be traced back as far as the fourth century C.E.". (The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 14, p. 1599.)

"I have observed earlier that we could not possibly be at Mount Sinai. The monastery [of St. Catherine] was situated in a narrow valley, which was not even large enough for a medium-sized army to be able to camp in, let alone the 600,000 men that Moses had with him, who, together with their wives and children, must have come to over 3,000,000."

"...the land west of a line from the Wady of Egypt to the Elanitic Gulf [Gulf of Aqaba] has always belonged to the Egyptian political sphere, and actually that is the present boundary of Egypt....the South-Arabians called the same region Msr, i.e. Misraim, Egypt."

"And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." Exodus 19:18
 
"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off." Exodus 20:18
 
"The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD GOD of Israel."Judges 5:5
 
"The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of GOD: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of GOD, the GOD of Israel." Psalms 68:8

"From here my guide and I climbed up the cliff to visit the `circles of Jethro' on the summit of Musalla ridge, from which we climbed down quite easily to our camp on the far side....A cairn marked the spot where Jethro is supposed to have prayed, and all round it are numerous circles,..."

"...a tradition amongst their [the inhabitants of this NW Arabian region] ancestors that 'very anciently they occupied all that country about Maan, where also Moses fed the flocks of Jethro the Prophet.'"

"From here [the ridge which had the 'Circles of Jethro'] I had a magnificent view of the whole of the Midian mountain range, with Lauz [Lawz] and its sister peaks in the northeast and Maqla's very little north of east, with the valley of al-Numair separating the latter from the low ridge of All Marra, extending from east to south-east, where the two peaks of Hurab stood out in front of the great range of Zuhd, which runs down to a point not far from the sea to our southward....The spot that held my imagination was the smooth, double-headed, granite boss of Hurab, an obvious candidate for identification with the Mount Horeb of the Exodus,...the only candidate for the honor which can claim to have preserved the name....According to Hasballah, the name Hurab applies primarily to the wadi [canyon], while he calls the mountain itself Al Manifa (which simply means lofty.)"

"...The main peak of Lauz, partly in cloud, rose to the south-east of our position....The upper part of the valley varied from 500 to 1,500 yards in width, with occasional wider basins allowing of splendid views of the great mountains, including the Lauz summit on which there seemed to be a patch of snow. The guide confirmed that it was snow; and, if so, it was the first and only time that I have ever seen snow in Saudi Arabia....Burton had never examined the gullies of Lauz or the other mountains in the Midian chain; and it is not unlikely that they may contain minerals of various kinds. The basalt pyramid of Maqla' looked climbable, but the sheer granite of the Lauz peaks would have needed more time and energy than I now had at my disposal. So far as I know, they have never been climbed by any human being."

"Midian, a son of Abraham and Keturah (Gen. xxv.2; i Chr. i.32); progenitor of the Midianites, or Arabians dwelling principally in the desert north of the peninsula of Arabia. Southwards, they extended along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Eyleh [Gulf of Aqaba]..." "Smith's Bible Dictionary", under "Midian".

"For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children." Galatians 4:25

"Their mothers likewise represent the two dispensations. Hagar [Agar] represents that given on Mt. Sinai, and, Paul notes in passing the appropriateness of the fact that Mt. Sinai is in Arabia, the land to which Hagar took her son."

"And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire" Exodus 19:18

    Relatives of Americans killed in terrorist attacks taking place in Israel have sued Arab Bank, a leading bank in Jordan.
 
    The suit claims that the bank channels funds from the Saudi Committee for Supporting Al Quds Infitada, which is run by the Saudi government, to Hamas and Palestinia Islamic Jihad.
 
    It also claims that Arab Bank pays insurance benefits to families of individuals killed in attacks on Israel, even to the families of suicide bombers. In spite of the surge in terrorism recently in Saudi Arabia, officials have not diminished the millions in "aid" that they provide to "the families of the martyrs" that they proudly spoke about in 2002.

    As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
 
    The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated.

    In a report to be published today, Freedom House evaluates the legal, political and societal standing of women in 16 Middle Eastern and North African countries plus the Palestinian Authority.
 
    Saudi Arabia scored lowest in every category on Freedom House's 1-5 rating.